Texas native shows off characters

BROWNWOOD — A football coach, two girls selling lemonade, a rodeo queen and folks dancing at a honky-tonk are just a few of the characters featured in a new book "American Character: A Photographic Journey," featuring the work of New York photographer and Texas native Eric McNatt.

McNatt, who was born and raised in Austin, chose Brownwood as the backdrop for his photographs because it is where he spent summers with his family when he was growing up.

"I thought it was important to look at where I came from, to look at my family history," McNatt said during a phone interview from Manhattan on Thursday. "I was so happy that people welcomed me into their lives and homes. It was a great experience." McNatt is one of 11 photographers selected by the USA Network and the Aperture Foundation to showcase their work in the new book. The book is part of the Character Project, an ongoing artistic initiative to pay tribute to the extraordinary people, from all walks of life, who make this country unique. The project was inspired by USA's iconic "Characters Welcome" brand.

For five weeks in late July and August, McNatt worked to capture the essence of the characters in the community where five generations of his family lived. McNatt wanted to photograph what he called the "wild and woolly, quiet and intense, quirky and idiosyncratic spirit" of Brownwood.

McNatt's parents, Connie Dewbre and Randy McNatt, were born and raised in Brownwood. He is the grandson of Tommie and Felton Dewbre and Glen and Helen McNatt, all of Brownwood.

McNatt worked from early in the morning to late into the night side by side with a video crew who filmed him while he shot photos of the Brownwood Lions football team during two-a-days, the Brown County Rodeo and the Lady Jackets, the NCAA women's basketball champions from Howard Payne University.

"Suddenly you wake up in your adult life and you have this much stronger appreciation for the time of your youth and where you grew up," McNatt said in the USA Network's promotional video.

In the video, former Brownwood Lions Coach Steve Freeman was quoted saying "high school ball starts with character, and it ends with character."

The photographs from the book will be on display in a touring exhibition, co-hosted by Vanity Fair magazine, which opened Thursday at the Stephan Weiss Studio in New York.

The exhibition will travel to Washington, D.C., April 3-4, Philadelphia April 17-18, Chicago April 24-25, St. Louis May 1-3, San Francisco Bay 8-9 and Beverly Hills May 15-16.

The foreword for the book was written by best-selling author and former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw.

Brokaw said football builds character, echoing Freeman's statements.

"You also see demure beauty in the portrait of Miss Heart of Texas, a girl becoming a woman in small town America where some rituals never go out of fashion," Brokaw wrote.

The book tour will not make it to Texas, but McNatt said he will visit Brownwood in the coming year for a special event where signed prints will be auctioned off and he will sign copies of the book.